Maintaining Splendor
by Raynedark
Summary: He wanted to die, more than anything. No one understood him, no one could. But one thing saved him. One thing let him shine. I can't tell you who it's about because it would ruin the story. But his name is mentioned once!


Don't own Gravitation, don't believe in suicide (see note at end for more details), do own this fic.

Maintaining Splendor

Keep on Shining

It was dark and quiet in that hollow half conscious state. He could feel himself floating; it was nice. Swaying and helpless. Everything was hazed over, but not by an angry pain, for this pain was more than welcome. No, it was hazed because his brain wasn't getting the needed oxygen, but that was okay. He wanted it that way.

As he swayed, soothingly- like the rocking of a cradle, he remembered the initial shock of the drop. He was frightened and thrashed about. The chair that he fell from had long since been kicked over, or at least he thought it was long since. He knew from past experience that on the border between Life and Death, time was awry. The chair falling had been what halted his furious flailing.

He realized that the noise might alert people to his presence and they might try to save him. So he quieted and felt the true bliss that came with the slowing and difficult breath. He couldn't wait until the rope cut off his oxygen completely, or it snapped his thin neck. He could almost hear the crack of the bone now.

Consciousness drifted further from him. He tried to cling, but was failing. He wanted to be awake to see the gate into Death. It had been a dream of his for a very long time, but every time he got close enough, he passed out or was saved. It was sincerely regrettable.

Right now, with the soothing sway of his body, he recalled the times that he had tried to escape before. That first time, he was so close, but it was his own fault that he wasn't able to step through that glorious threshold.

The first time he was in his parents' bathroom. His father's medicines were in his hands. Each bottle was perfectly emptied. He remembered dropping the last one. Plastic rattled on the floor as convulsive shivers and spasms overtook his body.

He slid down the wall and gathered himself into a ball. Things were blurry then too. That was the first time that he had seen it. The glorious gate. The escape path. The cool grey that beckoned him forward. It all seemed so simple there. There was no responsibility and nothing to do, but drift and become nonexistent. Everyone else drifting looked so happy. There was no care in their eyes, no passion, no fear. Those eyes were blank.

When the doctors found his little ten-year-old body, he was curled up shivering and vomiting in the cabinets, having expelled many toiletries to make room for himself. They pulled him out, he couldn't struggle, he was too fixed on the gate and the blank beyond.

On the way to the hospital they vacated his stomach of the rest of the terrible pills that he has taken. He remembered his mother's eyes as she looked at a pale quivering boy that could hardly be _her_ son. He saw the tears there too, showing that she knew it _was_ her son. Strangely, he had felt no remorse.

After that, he had been sent to a special school. The rest of the boys there were said to be just like him, but he found no friends among them. Each was distant and uncaring. None of them were like him. He wasn't completely grey. He had passion. A passion for Death.

He worried his teachers when he asked about the myths about Death from other countries. None of them would tell them, so he checked out books. That was soon stopped as well, so he had to find somewhere else to put his passion.

Perhaps, he would invest in art, but he disliked the messiness of it. Everyone said that he was a prodigy with paint and with clay and everything else he touched, but he didn't believe them. They were all just trying to put a happy optimists look on the terrors of being alive. He wouldn't ever believe them.

Giving up art, he turned to business. It seemed like something that could consume time well. He began examining books on running a good business, making money and striking deals. He also dabbled into the darker side of business and learned of blackmail and mud slinging. They seemed like a lot of fun, so he filed that information away. Soon he realized that, at eleven, he wouldn't be able to express himself with business either.

Athletics, botany, forestry, and mechanics weren't enough to soothe his soul either so he decided that it was time for another trip to the grandeur grey of Death.

This time was bloody. A stolen butter knife from lunch was hardly sufficient and ridiculously painful. It was too painful to endure in silence and he wailed as he drove the blunt metal through the skin of his wrist. He could only stare in amazement at the flow of red that came from him and the eerie way that the knife stood embedded in his wrist. He watched his red life seep away and pool around him.

It wasn't long before someone came running and saying things that were full of false care and fear. As a teacher edged closer to him, obviously trained in dealing with the very same situation, cooing harsh words of gentle sympathy, he turned and tried to run, run anywhere, but he was stopped as the knife slid out of his body. He felt every millimeter of the blade as it came out, shimmering and screaming with a dazzling, excruciating, brilliance.

He soon passed out and awoke in a hospital. He hadn't even gotten close to the glory of the gate that time. When he saw his parents this time, they had poorly cloaked their fear of him in care and love and the like. They too, cawed out a cacophony of falsities.

Instead of sending him home or to another school, he was sent to another kind of hospital. He talked there in frank with people that thought they could help.

"Why have you tried to kill yourself?" they would ask being rudely blunt. He would tell them so and avoid the question. Eventually he got very fed up with their constant pestering and decided he may as well tell them, it would get him out of the sterile prison with a little more speed.

"I've tried to die because I have nothing to live for and we will all die one day. The people on the other side look so much happier than I am. They have no cares and no pressures."

If they could be blunt, so could he. However blunt he was though, they always had more questions. "You've seen people on "the other side"?" they'd asked with supreme skepticism.

"Well of course. They float and live beyond a gate in a world of beautiful grey." They would nod even more and scribble things down and then send him on his merry way to sit in a blank white room with other people that were believed to have serious problems that were supposedly being fixed up.

When pretty girls in white uniforms gave him a little cup of medicine with a cheery faked smile, he would frown and sometimes splash the cup of water they gave him at them. He would then scream about the falsehoods in this world and the lack of color and scores of other things that bothered him, then would sit out the day in his room staring at the blank walls.

They weren't blank like Death though. Death had depth and color in shades and tints. Here there was just no color and nothing to look at and smile about.

He asked for paints and a canvas one day, telling the nurses sweetly that he had been considered quite an artist and that he thought it would help him to paint. They gave him the instruments of the trade gladly and let him work in peace.

He didn't paint the canvas though, he painted the blank white and stark walls of his room with bright blue and purples and greens and colors the he may very well have just made up. With the remaining paint he colored his own pale, sun deprived skin with the colors of a very distorted rainbow. When still more paint remained he colored his uniform that marked him as an inmate. Suddenly, the world looked better and there was color and something to look forward too.

The doctors and nurses were horrified at the defilation of private property, but he didn't care because he was colorful and different and everyone would be able to see that.

When asked why he had painted everything he explained to the obviously stupid doctor that he was different and also told the doctor that he was very stupid for not knowing his reason. He told them that he felt infinitely better with color and being different, so they permitted him to leave his room the mess that it was and his uniform in it's stiff, painted state.

When he would go back to his room he would make up stories and songs to go along with the pretty colors that now adorned his walls and his clothes, the paint had long since washed away from his body.

He improved magnificently over the course of the next few weeks because he also stopped taking his pills. Very tactfully, he left them in his mouth and drank his water then spit the soggy pills into the empty disposable cup. He threw the cup and pills away with no one the wiser.

That time was the second best in his life. He loved color ever afterward and when he was released to the care of his cousin he made sure that he had clothes that matched the rainbow in every way.

Over the course of the next three years, he drifted between his parents' house and his cousin's business. His blonde, talented, and powerful cousin let him go over the income and expenditures. He even advised his cousin on deals and offers. In an anonymous return of goods, he picked up little tricks on being subtle when making deals and in those three years he learned to be manipulative.

In his fourth year, after successfully manipulating the entire staff of the public school he attended in one small way or another, his cousin thought it was time to repay his debt in an obvious way. He was going to pass on his trade.

The first time he went to this surprise repayment he was confused to see his cousin's apartment just like normal. In one corner a bedroom and the other there was a kitchen. In the middle there was a living room set up and on the far wall between two windows there was a synthesizer.

His cousin gestured to it and the both moved gently over to it. "This is what I'm going to give you. Art in the form of sound. I think you'll like it." As his green-eyed cousin stroked the pale and black keys of the machine a glorious sound came from it. A sweet music varying and dancing in the air. Without the use of tangible objects save for the keyboard, his cousin produced an immense tapestry of sound that shimmered and shone with color and beat. It was all bare before him in his mind. This was what he had to do. This was what he was made for. This would be his new escape.

Suddenly, trying to reach that grey, colorless world so prematurely seemed foolish. He became very angry with himself, but that anger quickly turned to tears of fear. He had tried to die. He had tried to become nonexistent for the silly reason that he believed that he had nothing to live for. He _had_ tried to look for that thing that would keep him passionate, but it just seemed so much easier to give up on the disappointments and frustrations.

He never touched the beautiful music maker that night because he was too busy being held by his cousin as he wailed and screamed out the sorrow that he had never known was there. He muttered into a tear soaked shirt about his stupidity and his cousin muttered back that he was right, but that it was good that he was realizing it now.

For once, he was hearing real love and passion, not just some rehearsed fear or pity. He was receiving real words of sympathy, but not just that. He was receiving the truth. On top of it all, he knew that the truth was coming from someone that loved him. Not just because he was family, but because he had been a help and his cousin liked _him_.

His cousin had never tried to coddle him and had always treated him as an equal. His cousin had valued what he had learned and never tried to pry information from him unless it was about business and that was simply play and teasing. For the first time since he first saw the beauty of Death, he was experiencing passion anew. He was experiencing for the first time ever, true life. For the first time ever, he was awake.

The next year was spent with his one unfeigned friend, battling the machine with which his cousin seemed to have no trouble making glory with. He attended many of his cousin's concerts and learned what he really wanted. He watched the magnificent singer nearly explode with his passion and heard his voice rise and swell with it's own precious music. He watched his cousin, completely absorbed and bathing in the music he was making and listening to. He watched the woman in the band as well, singing and playing keyboard with as much passion as the other two. He looked at them altogether then and felt the incredible unity and wholeness in the music.

Everything was linked and there was an enormous net of passion and sound and something stifling and awe inducing cast over the entire crowd. When the concerts were over, he could never sleep. He always wanted to see more and find out what that stifling feeling was.

When there were no concerts to attend and study, he studied the keyboards on his own. Researching the history of the keyboards, piano and music in general. He played with the machine he had gotten for his sixteenth birthday and he vowed to himself that one day, he would be better than his cousin. One day he would be part of a driving force like that of his cousin's band and he would make a net of passion and sound with people he was distinctly linked to.

A few weeks after his sixteenth birthday, when all spare time had been spent with his own magnificent synthesizer his cousin became very impressed. He even knew that he was close to that peak of radiance that his cousin had reached so long ago. He also knew that to reach that peak he had to be with others in the same position and then repel off each other until they maintained splendor.

His chance soon came when his cousin told him at a lesson that an uprising new band was going to need a synth player and his blonde haired one thought that he would fit the job nicely. He said it was the last ingredient in the recipe. So he studied and practiced and learned with a chaotic passion for three weeks until it was time to meet the new band.

It seemed that the band needed an anchor with a little sense and normality. He became the one to ground them. Slowly they all became friends and close and all were filled with a want to play music and become great and envelope people with awe and beauty.

He became used to the antics of the group. The crazy manager, the strung out producer, emotional singer, and seemingly laid-back guitarist. He became tangled in all their lives and thrived off of the day-to-day drama. This continued with erratic ups, downs and level outs for months. They were all slowly reaching that climax. The last struggle was the hardest to endure. That last exertion was the longest and there never appeared to be a light to guide them. They all felt lost, but none feared it more than him.

He had been lost too often before, and with this new ground under his feet thought it would never happen again. The ultimate goal was to be the best that they could be and that seemed to identify with making to top of the charts. They were competing with his cousin. His master, his teacher, and the one person that understood him. He had to beat him at his own game. He had to utilize everything that he had, the business, the music and manipulation to win the game.

But in the end they lost. By only a few points, but it was still a loss. His cousin's band had been at the chart top for a record amount of weeks and his own band had been just under the whole time, toiling for air. It was almost as if they were finally drowned in the splendor that they did not yet have.

The rest of the group only let it bother them for a few days, but he couldn't get it off of his mind. He knew that he would never be able to reach that perfection that he had idealized. He knew that he had only himself to blame. Partly because he wasn't good enough and partly because he had idealized the perfection completely out of reach. He knew that their net of sound, passion and awe was flawed. It was irreparable.

So he lost his footing on the new ground and decided that he had lost his footing for life once again. He fell down into a dark place and was unseen for many days. He found his own little place where he could be alone. He locked himself in there and abstained from eating and drinking and just mourned the loss. He became weak and dark once more. All passion abandoned him and deemed him unworthy.

One night, when he tried to play a simple song, he found that he was unable. So with a calm mask he gathered rope from his parents' garage and managed to make it into a noose and attach the morbid system to the ceiling of his room. This would be the final fall and yet, ironically, he would be above the ground he had slipped from.

With a deep final breath, sour and acidic, he slipped the rope around his neck feeling, with a sick ecstasy, the roughness against his pale, thin neck. Then he stepped off. This was when his thrashing began. He had second thoughts. Thoughts of second chances and trying harder and realizing his stupidity, but the dark delight of Death soon came upon him. His sense of unworthiness returned and he once more looked upon the beauty of a world of grey and nothingness. A world where nothing was expected of him and he wouldn't have to think ever again. A place where he would have no standards and where he would have no passion.

The door opened as his eyes closed. He had lost his grip on consciousness. He wasn't aware that his beloved cousin, the one that he could never amount to, had been downstairs and heard the heavy chair clatter in his room. He wasn't aware that with the most careful hands, he became unstrung from the ceiling and his death trap. The noose was loosened and slipped back over his head. His lungs gasped for the air that they were denied.

When he opened his eyes, moments later, he expected to feel nothing and see only grey. Instead he gazed upon blue. Bright blue, and green and yellow. All vivid colors that conveyed joy and a liveliness. What he felt was a warmth that rivaled the cold of Death and the irregular breathing of someone that was frightened. He felt a tight embrace that was comfortable and compassionate compared to the uncaring grip of harsh rope.

What he heard were words like those he had the previous year when he first came to grips with his stupidity. Gasping words, "Why did you do this? If it's my fault I'm sorry. I don't want you to die. How could you be so stupid? Why do you want to die so much? God, you're so dumb! Don't die, I love you, I don't want your radiant splendor put out."

"I'm sorry," he whispered. He felt his cousin flinch slightly.

"Suguru," was whispered back as he was gathered closer by his dear green-eyed one was rocked back and forth.

"Why?"

"Because… I can't shine like the rest."

"You do shine though! I just came over to tell you about how much you're shining! You beat us. You made the top and have a steady hold. I came to tell you that. And I find you here dying. You idiot. It's always the hardest when you're waiting with fruitless effort. It wasn't always instant gratification for us. We had a lot of failures and waiting and feeling like we're talentless. It isn't always easy, but somehow we keep on shining.

"Don't ever try to put out your light again. That's the cowards' way out. You don't want to be called weak do you? You may be at the top now, but you need to learn strength still and that isn't something I can _teach_ you. That's something that we all have to find out on our own. I know you can do it, but you have to try harder.

"Talk with your friends. They found their strength when they were trying to get picked up by a label. They can help you and maybe show you a way to your own strength. I know it's in you, but it's going to be another wait and search. You have to stick it out though, and concentrate on the good things about living.

"I _can _tell you that the first step back on the right path is giving up your want to be dead and to believe in yourself a bit. Believe, but don't ever stop being hard on yourself. Maybe when you please yourself you'll get that strength, and go on headstrong and unyielding. Promise me that you will work to please yourself and try to find that strength within you. Promise."

"I promise," he wheezed, lungs still striving for breath, mind slowly receiving all of this information. When it had all sunk in again he was hearing the ambulance and beginning to have a sort of déjà vu. He had realized his stupidity before and cried then, but this time he laughed. Weak and pitiful, but it was the kind of laugh he deserved.

"I'm really very dumb. They all care for me. I'm a narcissist too, I only cared about _my_ pain," he laughed more, "What about the pain I would _cause_ if I died? I'm really quite stupid."

His cousin laughed too, nervous, but reverberating with relief, "Yes- yes you are an idiot."

!Note! I know that suicide is a serious thing. I have never had any real life experience with it so this story is just what I imagine the cause and effect to be like. I'm _really_ sorry if I offend anyone, like I said, I've got no personal experience. I hope that I can show that it's kick butt to be alive and that killing yourself is scary shiznat (trying to keep it PG) and wicked sad. But yeah, gomen nasai. It's in my nature to apologize and I think I need to for my opinion, AKA this fic. Also I'm sorry if I made this all into a stupid death cliché. So sorry, again.


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